Wednesday, March 6, 2013

My
crowdfunding application was approved last night by Microryza.com, one of the
new crowdfunding science organizations – think Kickstarter.com but for
research. It will be one of the first human biology research projects on the
site. Check it out: MILK WITH ALTITUDE.

You’re
probably wondering why I am trying this. Well, it can’t hurt, and in these
uncertain times, I feel like grants are more miss than hit (actually, all are
miss as of late) and despite putting a tremendous effort into applying for
funding, I am coming up short for this summer’s field season.I have some general ideas why some grants
aren’t funded (apparently NatGeo does not find milk sexy). But we’re going
ahead with the research anyway. Overall, funding for research on human milk is limited,
despite dramatically new technological breakthroughs and physiological
discoveries. I’m unbelievably happy that Medela.com (the pump maker) funds the
Hartmann group and there seems to be excellent funding for their continued work
on understanding the physiology of the mammary gland and their new work on stem
cells in human milk (see: Hassiotou et al 2012). But for comparative work
between and within non-WEIRD populations, especially those dealing with unusual
or extreme environments, the coffers are pretty empty.

So this
is an experiment in 2 parts: one the project itself and two – can we
crowdsource a study on human milk composition? Through Microryza, I am asking for $5000 for summer
research on milk composition among ethnic Tibetans living at high
(12600-7500ft) and intermediate (4600 ft) altitude in Nepal. $4000 of the funds
are for the fieldwork itself – paying 3 field assistants for 2 months at good
local wages ($20/day) and compensating the mothers for their time (we hope to
recruit 120 women). I will pay for the living expenses of the field staff
myself. The remaining $1000 is fund raising for a community based workshop on
safe birthing and infant feeding practices that will be open to any and all
women in the communities regardless of participation in the study.

So here
is the pitch: I want to investigate milk composition (nutrients, hormones) in
75 ethnically Tibetan women living at high altitude in the Nubri Valley of
Nepal. Participants will be drawn from 5 villages in the Nubri Valley, where my
collaborator and colleague, Geoff Childs has conducted research since 1998
including living in the village for more than a year.A control sample (n=50) of lower altitude
women, drawn from the Tibetan community in Kathmandu, will also be recruited.

Figure 1: Images from Nubri, Nepal. Photos by Geoff Childs.

The project will be the first project EVER to
look at milk composition in a high altitude adapted population. Prior work has
investigated breastfeeding behaviors among high altitude populations (Dang et
al., 2005; Wiley 2004) but never specifically looked at
milk composition in any population or investigated ideas and beliefs about
breastfeeding in this population. Unlike many other Tibetan populations living
outside of Tibet, the population in Nubri is an old population – they likely
migrated into the Nubri Valley at least 400 years ago (Childs, 2004).

And it
gets cooler – breast milk is frequently considered in Tibetan medicine. Given
the increased rates of illness and mortality among high altitude living
populations, including Tibetans (although genetic adaptations increase survival
compared to more recent migrant groups) there considerable treatment of infant
health in traditional Tibetan medicine. Amchi, trained Tibetan medical practitioners,
even include mother’s milk in their analyses of infant illness, testing milk
for its color and its suspension in water as measure of humoral balance (Wiley,
2004). This is actually pretty interesting, because milk with more immune
proteins or fat should have a different color and density. We’ll be finding out
more about this practice.

But the
real meat of the study will be the work with the mothers and infants. Our plan
is to conduct interviews on mothers about their health, their beliefs and
practices regarding infant feeding, their diets, and their infants’ health and
diets.Interviews will be coupled with
anthropometric measurements (measurements of weight, height, and body fat) on
both mothers and infants. We’ll be investigating how maternal physiology and
environmental pressures influence milk composition and how milk composition in
turn may be associated with specific aspects of infant growth, such as
increased body fat. We know it is energetically expensive to be a mother
anywhere, and even more so at high altitude, where low oxygen induces a state
of chronic hypoxia, it is often quite cold, food supplies may be limited and
not very diverse, and we know that women have increased metabolic rates,
possibly as a result of adaptations to hypoxia or cold stress (Beall, 1981). We
want to know how they balance these increased energy demands over multiple
pregnancies and if there is 1) an association between maternal physiology and
the nutrients and hormones in milk and 2) we want to know if differences in the
milk predict differences in infant size and health.

Want to
help? Head over to Microryza and sponsor Milk with altitude – or one of the other great projects
over there! Want to donate to NepalSEEDS directly? Head here and help them keep
doing great work not only in Nubri but throughout Nepal.

Just here for the
science? Part 4 of our 4 part series on breastfeeding, this time focused on the
infant side of the breastfeeding relationship will be up at the end of the week.

And as always, thanks for reading & supporting
science!

References

Beall,
C.M. (1981) Growth in a population of Tibetan origin at high altitude. Ann Hum Biol, 8(1):31-8.

Childs, G. (2004) Tibetan Diary: From Birth to Death and
Beyond in a Himalayan Valley of Nepal. Berkeley: University of
California Press.